Technology, careers, life and being happy

Don’t waste your time with fancy resume sites and video resumes

I came across a website that offers a service to host your resume in a snazzy web 2.0 format. It offers a custom URL that you can send employers to, and it lets you host a video resume. The site is all pretty with the latest pastel colors and rounded corners, and there are little tabs you click on to get to different bits of information. Somehow this is supposed to make you stand out and let you take control of your career or something.

Don’t believe it. It’s extra work for the hiring manager, and will work against you in the hiring process.

Consider the hiring manager who has 100 resumes in his inbox. He’s looking to weed through the crap and find the good people. Now here’s an email that says “I don’t have a resume, but here’s a link to my Yadayadayada.com page”.

You think that hiring manager is going to click through? Not very likely.

Say he clicks through and sees all the Web 2.0 colorful goodness. Hey, look, a video. You think he’s going to watch a video about you? Not very likely.

And then say you put up a video, and you fill it with meaningless blather like “I’m a hard worker and I’m a team player” and don’t tell anything about what you’ve actually done and haven’t given the viewer any details about what you’ve actually achieved in your career. Now you’ve wasted the hiring manager’s time to tell them the same nothing.

Video resumes aren’t a new idea. They’ve been around since the 80s when people thought it was brilliant to mail a VHS tape to an employer. Now it’s the 10s, and it’s only slightly less time-wasting.

It’s all about WHAT you say, and not about making it flashy. Flashy works against you if it gets in the way of the hiring manager quickly and easily finding out what he wants to know.

And what does a hiring manager want to know? Three key points:

What can you do for me?

What have you done in the past, in specific?

Are you going to be a pain in the ass if I hire you? Or are you one of those guys who comes in and disrupts a team and has to be fired three months later?

A resume and cover letter that answer those questions are worth 100x more than a video resume and branded website.